There’s
a moment, late in Roger Michell’s Venus, in which aged
actors Maurice (Peter O’Toole) and Ian (Leslie Phillips) peruse
the names of their dead fellow thespians on the wall of a
church, in which the viewer has one of those “huh” moments,
like something you’d experience walking in on an intensely
personal moment between two people. In this case, that the
characters are openly contemplating their imminent demises
is reason enough to give pause, but even more so, the fact
that the 74-year-old O’Toole himself will, before long, join
that pantheon with talents like Laurence Olivier, Laurence
Harvey, Alec Guinness, and so on. For movie lovers, it’s a
slap in the face, the realization that a golden age of postwar
cinema is down to its last surviving members. Like Maurice
and Ian, we want to hang on, but in our case, it’s to an image
such as the golden-haired, blue-eyed O’Toole of Lawrence
of Arabia.

What Maurice ends up hanging on to, but only when she’ll let
him near her, is Ian’s slovenly, rude grandniece Jessie (Jodie
Whittaker), whom he dubs Venus. Explaining that he’s impotent,
and therefore no real threat, Maurice attempts to befriend
and even mold the girl, who has dreams of becoming a model.
At times, Jessie lets Maurice touch her—“you can kiss my shoulder
three times”—before recoiling in horror at his aged lips and
the slop he leaves on her skin. Her cruelty is stunning, but
it’s matched somewhat by the fact that Maurice, by his own
admission to ex-wife Valerie (Vanessa Redgrave), is hardly
a sweet-natured person, having years ago abandoned her “holding
the babies” in favor of cultivating a parade of other women.
When Jessie slaps Maurice, or insults him, he chuckles, clearly
enjoying that fact that she’s taking him seriously.

It’s this need to be dealt with, even as an annoyance, as
opposed to being forgotten or relegated to some back corner
to fade away, that draws the ailing Maurice to Jessie. Over
time, his caresses of Jessie’s supple skin lose their ick
factor, because what Maurice is after isn’t so much sexual
or titillating, as it is youth and connectedness. One can
see how he longs deeply for his own lost youth and beauty.
Indeed, as the movie progresses, it becomes markedly sadder,
as the inevitable moment ticks down. Somehow, Hanif Kureishi’s
script is able yet to deliver pristine moments of wry wit
and bawdy humor amid the sadness.

This is O’Toole’s show, all the way. He imbues every movement,
every word spoken or eyebrow raised, with arch nuance, reminding
one and all of his glorious career—and serving notice that
he’s not quite done yet. Whittaker clearly has the trickier
role, in part because she’s written to be Maurice’s foil more
than a fully dimensional character in her own right, but she
proves up to the task of going toe-to-toe with a master. Beyond
the powerhouse acting, though, Venus is most remarkable
for its open exploration of issues dealing with age, particularly
loneliness and heartache. It’s the filmmakers’ insistence
on revealing to us that the gaping maw that is Maurice’s mouth
was once, presumably, a great instrument of pleasure—and making
us believe it—that goes a long way toward humanizing the story.
Not surprisingly, Kureishi and Michell paired up to make 2003’s
The Mother, in which 60-something Anne Reid got it
on with a pre-Bond Daniel Craig. As with that movie, Venus
turns matters which, in lesser hands, could prove distasteful
into an elegy on life and love.

Without
Feeling

Amazing
Grace

Directed
by Michael Apted

Amazing
Grace certainly makes for a better marquee than William
Wil berforce. Which is perhaps an explanation for why
this historical drama by Michael Apted uses the title of an
evangelical hymn for its portrayal of Wilberforce’s decades-long
struggle to end slavery in 18th-century England. As a movie,
Amazing Grace is an admirable biography meant to popularize
a resolute philanthropist, but despite the filmmakers’ best
efforts at giving it entertainment value, Wilberforce’s unwieldy
and protracted legal battle proves to be a stolid cinematic
experience.

The choice of Wilberforce (Ioan Gruffudd) as the film’s hero
might’ve been made for clarity—he was the centrifugal force
behind the eventual passage of the Slavery Abolition Act of
1833 (and died the next day)—but as a character, he dulls
in comparison to his wily contemporaries, especially his lifelong
friend, Prime Minister William Pitt (Benedict Cumberbatch);
the dashing freedom fighter and writer Thomas Clarkson (Rufus
Sewell); and Pitt’s powerful Whig rival, Lord Fox (Michael
Gambon).

It doesn’t help that Gruffudd is a somewhat stagy actor, or
that he’s practically pushed off the screen at several turns
by the stellar supporting cast, including Toby Jones as a
ducal representative of the rotting aristocracy. Meanwhile,
the back-and-forth narrative muddles such pivotal events as
a “conversion experience” that almost led Wilberforce to become
a preacher. Even his whirlwind romance with a beautiful progressive
(the consistently boring Romola Garai) is a trudge: Their
courtship consists of ideological sparring that’s part information
dissemination, and part framework for flashbacks of the younger
Wilberforce, whose sharp oratory gives the script ripe opportunity
for Parliamentary ripostes.

After recuperating, mid-career, from exhaustion and colitis,
Wilberforce returns to Parliament with a nifty piece of legislation
concocted by a maritime lawyer that puts a serious dent in
the slave trade to the West Indies. How Wilberforce and his
coalition slide this deceptively superficial bill past the
pro-slavery representative of Liverpool (Ciarán Hinds) is
one of Apted’s more successful ploys at enlivening what is
in essence a history lesson writ large. And as such, it’s
exemplary. Between Wilberforce and his allies, the factual
horrors of slavery in the British Empire are authentically
exposed, with a grace note, as it were, from John Newton (a
moving Albert Finney), the former slave-ship captain turned
Anglican priest who composed “Amazing Grace.” However it’s
indicative of the film’s lack of fervor that the use of Newton’s
hymn in Mike Nichols’ Silkwood had a greater impact
than a recital within its own context.